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CRJ
— New Name for the IRA?
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We
can`t have local warlords being turned into local
law lords
- SDLP leader, Mark Durkan
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Anthony McIntyre • Parliamentary Brief,
December 2005
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With
the wags chirping that ten out of every nine people
no longer believe a word uttered by Sinn Fein, the
party is managing to unite against itself an array
of normally disparate tendencies, long frustrated
with its endless procrastination and self-serving
elongation of the peace process. In recent months
this opposition has coalesced around concerns over
the function of Community Restorative Justice (CRJ)
schemes that operate in many of Northern Ireland's
deprived areas. It voices grave reservations, less
about CRJ as a theoretical concept but rather about
its practical working out on the streets and the
standards of accountability that it is held to.
In
an environment where elements of the policing and
justice system are frequently referred to by way
of acronyms, ASBO and CRJ are two that feature prominently.
Whereas ASBOs, notwithstanding the controversy they
generate, are an integral part of the criminal justice
armoury, the status of CRJ is much more contested.
Ostensibly an independent body dedicated to the
peaceful resolution of neighbourhood disputes and
low level crime, it is not viewed as such by its
many critics, one of whom is the former SDLP mayor
of Belfast, Alban Maginness. He contends that CRJ
'is about control and power, it's not really about
justice.' For Maginness and fellow sceptics, the
power behind the CRJ throne is the IRA.
The
SDLP has headed the pack of political parties raising
serious questions about possible government financial
endorsement of a body which leading Sinn Fein member,
Catriona Ruane claimed is intended to function as
an alternative to the Police Service of Northern
Ireland (PSNI). Downing Street, in reportedly defiant
mood, initially seemed prepared to ignore all objections
and in time honoured fashion cut a deal with Sinn
Fein that would see CRJ funded and effectively handed
a license to incongruously uphold the law by operating
outside it. It then found itself pulled up sharp
due to serious misgivings being publicly vented
by the chair of the policing board, Sir Desmond
Rea and PSNI assistant chief constable Judith Gillespie.
With too many opponents on too many fronts, Blair's
office was forced to take its fingers out of it
ears.
While
steadfastly refusing to cooperate with the police,
to the consternation of its critics, in the six
years it has been functioning CRJ has established
14 projects while another 12 are still maturing.
They are based primarily in Belfast and Derry, where
charitable funding has been provided. Elsewhere,
Newry, South Armagh and Downpatrick, the projects
are maintained in a voluntary capacity. CRJ purportedly
deals with approximately 1,700 cases annually, which
involve about 6,000 people. It claims to train around
160 people a year as volunteers and at any given
time has 120-130 people in the field. Its boss,
Jim Auld, points out that it is fully audited each
year and is independently evaluated by a leading
US academic. The Criminal Justice Oversight Commissioner,
Lord Clyde favourably appraised CRJ saying: 'these
organisations are engaged in valuable and effective
work in their communities. Their growth gives evidence
of the value they have.'
None
of this has placated the critics, all of who reject
the benign inference such characterisation lends
to CRJ. Belfast based blogger, Carrie Twomey, caustically
observed:
CRJ
is the back door for the residue of the Provos as
far as 'legitimate' control in nationalist estates
… where Provos go when they retire. So they
can still get the feeling of authority and the bat
… every nationalist estate that is dominated
by the Provos has tales of child molesters, rapists,
even, as we have so graphically seen in the Short
Strand, murderers, who are given the get-out-of-jail-free
pass by virtue of their membership/standing in a
particular movement. Would CRJ stand up to this?
Only
last week two prominent Irish journalists, Suzanne
Breen and Newton Emerson, wrote devastating critiques
of CRJ, which called into question many of its operating
procedures. Emerson punched holes in its claims
to be behaving in accordance with the Vienna Declaration
of Basic Principles on Restorative Justice. Breen
quoted the head of the North's Rape Crisis Centre,
Eileen Calder as saying:
It
was the gang rape of a young woman. The perpetrators'
families were associated with the Provisional IRA
and CRJ. Known IRA men were seen cleaning up the
scene. These people did their utmost to prevent
this young woman reporting the crime to police …
at worst, they've threatened women and attempted
to cover up crimes committed by those with IRA,
Sinn Fein or CRJ connections. Allowing such people
power is like letting the lunatics run the asylum.
The
highly charged debate takes place against a political
backdrop where inertia passes for momentum. Sinn
Fein, the one party unequivocally backing CRJ, is
adopting a strategy which, from its own perspective,
is cogent enough. It argues that the PSNI is not
yet an acceptable police force but contends that
it will drop its opposition to it as soon as devolved
powers of policing and justice become available.
Reasonable enough, were it not for the fact that
before that stage is even reached devolution itself
must return to the North. And Sinn Fein's alter
ego, the IRA, has done enough through having robbed
the Northern Bank last December to ensure that there
is no mood in the unionist community for the resumption
of a devolved power-sharing executive. Sinn Fein
hopes that Ian Paisley's DUP will take the blame
for this. In the meantime Sinn Fein, from the very
hiatus it helped create, lobbies for some form of
interim policing measures totally independent of
any PSNI input or supervision.
Many
throughout Northern Irish society are worried that
if Sinn Fein is successful in persuading the British
government to sign up to this agenda, then there
will be no early resolution of the outstanding issue
of when nationalists fully endorse the police and
that a two tier policing system will emerge - one
that is subject to public scrutiny and another that
operates in the shadows.
Critics
of CRJ fear that current practice provides a window
on the future if the government accedes to Sinn
Fein pressure. For them, what initially started
out as a good idea has become progressively warped
in direct proportion to Sinn Fein's input into it.
Evidence on the ground would lend weight to these
fears. Whereas previously young people would actually
threaten to report to the CRJ any IRA members who
were giving them grief, there are few who make any
such distinction today. A common refrain from young
people advised to raise their concerns with the
CRJ is 'sure that's just the IRA.' It is hard to
persuade them otherwise when the CRJ officials include
in their number many former IRA prisoners such as
Harry Maguire, sentenced to life imprisonment after
being convicted of killing two British Army corporals
captured at an IRA funeral in 1988. And their doubts
are enhanced when they learn that one senior CRJ
official has lobbied for a prominent critic of Sinn
Fein to be murdered, while another was part of a mob
that besieged the home of a writer who had called
for a transparent community inquiry into the IRA
murder of a local man.
Moreover,
many people 'requested' to attend a CRJ office admit
to going out of fear of the consequences for failing
to show up. Despite Jim Auld's protestations that
CRJ performs no coercive function it is invariably
made clear to those whose attendance is required
rather than desired that the CRJ is the sheath that
masks the sword. In this sense Auld's claim to be
'taking power and responsibility away from republicans,
in terms of dealing with anti-social behaviour,
and giving it to the community where it needed to
belong' is dubious.
Many
who believe in the value of a CRJ project that is
accountable and transparent are now trying to raise
the democratic bar in order to prevent the emergence
of a state legitimised vigilante operation, which
is answerable only to itself. It is too early to
say definitively if they have succeeded. If they
fail, the state, which claims as a fundamental principle
the protection of those it governs, will have abandoned
many citizens to the dubious justice that is devised
in smoke filled rooms.
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There
is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word
so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to
the lake of fire upon hearing it.
- Frank Zappa
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